“When Myrna and Earl Fincher married 53 years ago they started farming their yard “out of necessity”. Today, the Finchers make a living selling their organic produce to restaurants and at the local farmers’ market twice a week for much of the year. They had no experience as farmers, but learned by trial and error.”
DIY
Casa Verde
This site is in Romanian and so I’ll keep this entry brief. The home is so beautiful that few words are needed.
How Much Will My House Cost?
Lots of people ask us how much their earthbag or strawbale house will cost. Cost is a major consideration of any new home, and so it’s understandable why people want to learn more. However, many people don’t realize how many variables are involved. It’s the old “how long is a piece of string” question that makes it very difficult to answer. The following examples will help clarify what I mean.
Low Cost Twig Stoves
Don’t want to buy and carry fuel for your camping stove? No problem. These affordable twig stoves burn whatever is available – twigs, branches, pine cones, pine needles, wood chips, wood shavings, plant stalks, grass, dung, leaves, paper, cardboard or any other type of biomass. They only need a handful or so of fuel to boil a pot of water. That amount is easy to find even in most deserts. Twig stoves cook faster, produce less smoke and typically pose less of a fire risk than camp fires on the ground.
Earthbag Tornado Shelter
We always enjoy hearing about reader’s projects. A reader just sent me photos of their earthbag tornado shelter in Ohio. We’ve been encouraging earthbag storm shelters since the beginning of this blog, because they’re low cost, efficient, simple to build and can save lives. The links below explain in detail how they’re built.
“I wanted to show you a picture of the work in progress. It took us two summers to build by the way, we had lots of interruptions. We just made sure it was well covered when we weren’t working on it, and well secured for the winter that it didn’t have stucco on it and we didn’t have any problems doing it this way. We live in Southern Ohio so we will have to be very attentive at repairing any cracks due to the weather. We have one already that needs fixed. With the air flow inside the shelter and stucco on the outside hopefully it will dry out quickly if any moisture gets between the stucco and the bags. We will see how it goes.
More Details about Terra Preta
I’m really fascinated with the terra preta/biochar concept. We briefly touched on the subject in our blog post Big Ideas that are Changing the World. Watch the excellent video there for a good overview of the subject.
Terra preta is nothing short of amazing. It’s considered the most fertile soil in the world, and has retained its fertility over thousands of years. Studies have reported positive effects from biochar on crop production in degraded and nutrient–poor soils. Biochar–enhanced soils can indefinitely sustain agricultural production [that means forever!], whereas non-amended soils quickly become depleted of nutrients. Compare terra preta to modern industrial agriculture that gradually depletes soil and pollutes groundwater and food sources with toxic chemicals.